Schwartz run for Pa. governor appears more certain

By MARC LEVY, Associated Press

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

HARRISBURG — U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz appears close to formally announcing a run Pennsylvania governor in 2014 as a fellow Democrat, state Sen. Daylin Leach, announced his candidacy Tuesday for the Philadelphia-area congressional seat that Schwartz has occupied since 2005.

A Schwartz political spokeswoman, Reesa Kossoff, would not definitively say Tuesday what the fifth-term congresswoman is up to. Schwartz has said she plans to run for governor and that she would not campaign for her congressional seat and the governor’s office at the same time.

Leach, of Montgomery County, said he was convinced Schwartz will run for governor.

“I don’t think she talks about running for an office like governor frivolously,” Leach said.

Leach, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was re-elected to a second four-year term in the Senate in November. He served six years in the state House before that. Last year, he ran a campaign effort to elect more Democrats to the state Senate as Democrats won three seats previously held by Republicans.

Meanwhile, a congressional aide to Schwartz responded to a dust-up involving a political adviser to state Treasurer Rob McCord.

The aide, Schwartz’ chief of staff Rachel Magnuson, said Tuesday that Schwartz did not know about or approve in advance tense emails she wrote to McCord adviser Mark Nevins.

In the emails, Magnuson complained that Nevins had been unduly critical of Schwartz’s chances in a gubernatorial election against Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, and suggested that she might try to dissuade others in Democratic political campaign circles from hiring him.

Politico first reported on the March 12 email exchange Friday.

Magnuson called her emails “rash” and in the “heat of moment,” and said she sent the emails using a private device on personal time using a private email address.

McCord, a Democrat, is considering running for governor.

Including McCord and Schwartz, more than half-dozen other Democrats are currently in the mix to challenge Corbett next year.